Strategy Planning and Enterprise Architecture – dealing with the devil in the detail

11 November 2011

Enterprise Architecture is all about supporting strategic planning and business transformation activities, although many organisations seem to almost wilfully forget that this is one of the main purposes of Enterprise Architecture if not the most important one.

Enterprise Architecture primarily focuses on what an enterprise needs to do in order to stay viable, efficient and profitable in the future. In Viable System Model (VSM) terms, Enterprise Architecture is a System 4 type of system. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model

Enterprise Architecture bridges the gap between new strategy ideas and the execution of those ideas, in the same way that the intelligence corp in the military provide intelligence about current and future capabilities to the generals and ensure that the appropriate planning takes place in order to win the military campaigns.
Many organisations without an Enterprise Architecture function will risk failing to properly implement or deliver the on their business strategy.

It is frequently reported that many strategic ideas and initiatives identified by C-level executives are never properly implemented or seen through to full operation by the business units. That big picture of the business strategy on the white board in the CEO’s office or a high level presentation can look deceptively simple in a board meeting, but as they say ‘the devil is in the detail’. The C-level executives are responsible for seeing that the strategy is implemented, but it will be the Enterprise Architect that works out the detail.

Organisations need to know where they are now and create a baseline Enterprise Architecture model of their current state, then create a future target Enterprise Architecture model and do impact and gap analysis between them. The future state Enterprise Architecture model often needs to contain not just one single future target model but multiple complementary or competing models of the many future scenarios that are likely to have been developed using Scenario Planning techniques. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning

Strategic business transformation can be hard. Enterprise Architecture makes it far easier to answer questions such as:

What Strategic initiatives are needed to fill the gaps found and address risks and issues?

What new or changed business capabilities will be needed?

What needs to be done when?

How does one prioritise the different strategic business initiatives on an Enterprise Architecture roadmap?

When are these investments in change going to be delivered?

How will the initiatives be funded?

What are the dependencies between the strategic initiatives?

How will the business model be changed?

How will the target Business Operating Model be changed?

What organisation units and business functions need to be changed?

What value chain and value streams need to be changed?

What are the costs and potential revenues?

How feasible is the business strategy?

What feedback mechanisms between ‘systems’ will be needed?

How will change be governed and how will compliance be assured? (i.e. how do we overcome resistance from difficult stakeholders, and the ‘Not invented here’ anti pattern?)

What controls, KPI’s, CSF’s, incentives, bonus structures will be needed?

What changes to the principles and standards will be needed?

How do we align people, processes and technology?

What other things have we forgotten?

I recommend reading the books:

‘Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change’ by Lawrence Hrebiniak and

‘Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution’ by Jeanne Ross and Peter Weill.